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policy of national unity and reconciliation forces peasant Rwandans to live within its lies, they in turn confront it in ways that seek to restore their personal dignity while subtly attempting to live their own truth of what they experienced before, during, and after the genocide. Chapter 6 explores one specific mechanism of national unity and reconciliation—the now-closed gacaca (ga-cha-cha) courts. Specifically, it illustrates the extent to which the postgenocide government and its agents controlled the gacaca process. The chapter analyzes the power of the state and its efforts, through appointed local officials, to control the gacaca process to identify the myriad constraints that the policy of national unity and reconciliation imposes on individuals and how this limits individual opportunity for resistance. It focuses mainly on the everyday acts of resistance of Tutsi survivors, as the primary actors in the gacaca process, to demonstrate the subtle and creative ways in which they revealed their discontent toward government policy before the courts. The chapter finds that the gacaca courts were more than an instrument of state power that created an atmosphere of fear and insecurity in the everyday lives of many ordinary Rwandans; the courts also helped the RPF consolidate its political power in ways that are contrary to the stated goals of the policy of national unity and reconciliation. The conclusion summarizes the argument while highlighting its utility in assessing the likelihood of a return to mass political violence in contemporary Rwanda. It also focuses on the implications of the research for theories of the state, highlighting the power of the state to impose its will even in the face of individual resistance. By identifying and analyzing the practices of the state, I assess forms of domination that condition obedience by virtue of political authority from the perspective of those subject to what they themselves perceive to be an illegitimate form of state power (Weber 1946, 80– 86). The conclusion analyzes the methodological importance of bringing in the individual lived experiences of ordinary peasant people. It also examines what the everyday acts of resistance of ordinary peasant Rwandans teach us about the broader stability of the policy of national unity and reconciliation as the basis for Rwanda’s “present and future peace and security” (interview with NURC official 2006). Finally, the conclusion highlights some areas for further comparative research given the potential for renewed mass political violence in Rwanda. A Note on Field Notes and Interviews Readers will have already noticed that I distinguish “interviews” from “field notes” in the text. I do this to help readers understand and interpret who has said what. The material gathered in formal interviews, which I define narrowly to include only the stories and observations of my thirty-seven research participants, usually in the presence of a translator and in full view of family, neighbors, and even local government officials, are cited as “interviews,” while the experiences and observations in my everyday interactions with Rwandans from all walks of life—peasants and elites alike—that I inscribed every evening in the format of “field notes” are cited that way. These distinctions are used so that the reader can make sense of how I turned personal narratives into “findings,” using both descriptive accounts of everyday life in postgenocide Rwanda from a variety of actors and my own
observations to reveal broad patterns of state activity from the perspective of the ordinary peasant Rwandans I consulted. I maintain different standards of consent for state elites as I was almost always the weaker party in the exchange. Interacting with them was a perfunctory part of the research process as there were always layers of administrative approval required to access the remote areas where ordinary Rwandans live. In the early stages of the research, I had to cultivate rapport and trust with local officials in order to be allowed to enter rural regions within the bailiwick of the official in question. I also ascribe the observations and experiences of state agents, be they local officials or government elites in Kigali, to the “field note” category, as most of my interactions with them were unplanned informal exchanges that took place as part of my reeducation process (Thomson 2011d). I had conversations with representatives of the Ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Gender, Internal Security, Justice, Local Government, and Youth, Sports, and Culture; the attorney general; the head of the gacaca courts; judges on the Supreme Court; the heads of the Constitutional Reform, Human Rights, National Unity and Reconciliation, and National AIDS Control Commissions and of the Office of the Ombudsman; leaders of the RPF; and Catholic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Muslim leaders. Material gathered from these formal interviews before my research was stopped is cited as interviews with a representative of a particular government ministry or body (e.g., “interview with NURC official 2006” or “interview with senior RPF official 2006”). Pseudonyms are used throughout the text. As an additional safeguard against any potential government backlash or reprisal against the peasant Rwandans who participated in the research, I do not cite the specific date or location of interviews.
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Bringing in Peasant Rwandans through Life History Interviewing In studying peasant Rwandans as active subjects, my research is designed to allow for inquiry into their past, present, and future. The task is not to predict but rather to illustrate the knowledge that peasant Rwandans possess as a result of their lived experiences and to situate those individual realities within a broader historical, cultural, and institutional context. At issue is how state practices and mechanisms of national unity and reconciliation affect people’s relationship to the state and its agents. The research does not seek to establish a knowable “truth” but instead illustrates what counts as truth, who or what evokes it, how it circulates, and who gains and loses by particular nominations of what is true, real, and significant. The research brings in thirty-seven peasant Rwandans as “knowers” of their own life stories, rather than building on existing portrayals of these individuals as powerless victims. Life history interviews are the backbone of the research, and this chapter focuses on the techniques and procedures of conducting life history interviews in the course of interviewees’ everyday life, as well as the challenge of translating these experiences into knowledge. This approach is developed over four sections. I first conceptualize life history interviews as a method to identify personal stories; I then discuss the choice of southern Rwanda as the research site, the process of identifying the individuals who shared their stories with me, and the broader context of discreet government surveillance. In the third section, I set out the procedures I used to conduct life history interviews with ordinary peasant Rwandans. I also address specific ethical and practical challenges and solutions that arose in the research process. The last section sets out my approach to interpretative research and the methods used to analyze the stories told to me in the course of the research. Conceptualizing Life History Interviewing I use the life history interview method as a way to bring in the life stories of ordinary peasant Rwandans to both counter and contextualize the official narrative of national unity and reconciliation. Through life history interviewing, we learn more than how they see themselves in relation to others— we also see how they represent their own lived experiences of violence. As Plummer writes, “stories are the pathways to understanding the bases of identity” (1995, 19). The narrative approach that is inherent to life history interviewing has much to offer political scientists as they provide a way to make sense of language, including that which is not spoken (Riessman 1990). In addition to increasing readers’ awareness of a variety of viewpoints and opinions, life history interviews provide ways to understand the interactions that occur among individuals and groups— important insights when seeking to understand and explain any society, let alone a postconflict one (Brounéus 2008; Jackson 1998; Plummer 1995, 2001). They are also useful in helping us understand the art of truth telling about life under authoritarian rule (Bilbija et al. 2005). With their capacity to contextualize and situate individual stories within broader societal discourses, both symbolic and material, life history interviews provide much-needed nuance to the dominant narrative of national unity and reconciliation as crafted and forcibly maintained by the RPF- led government. Life history interviews are able to provide this contextualized nuance through the stories that ordinary people tell (McCabe and Bliss 2003). As a method of knowledge production, life history interviews do not “ignore the politics of narratives and the extent to which they support or contest social structures and practices” (Jackson 1998, 62). The knowledge produced from life history interviews with ordinary people does more than just reflect their lived reality; it also challenges taken- for-granted beliefs, assertions, and assumptions of life before, during, and after the 1994 genocide, such as those found in the RPF’s policy of national unity and reconciliation (Worthington 1996). These histories also highlight the importance of understanding that lives lived through violence do not neatly correspond to the conceptual boundaries of “pre-” and “post-” conflict periods. Instead, individual experiences of violence reside in specific socio-historical and political legacies that in turn shape postconflict “peace” processes. As Nordstrom notes, “War doesn’t end and peace begin in a unilinear process. . . . Peace begins in the front-line actions of rebuilding the possibility of self (which violence has sought to undermine) and society (which massacres and destruction have sought to undermine)” (2004, 183–84). In situating the lived experiences of peasant Rwandan men and women, my research privileges their individual agency, circumscribed as it is, in producing a text that is grounded in the narratives that they use to “explain to outsiders what practices, places or symbols mean to them” (Young 1997, 72). This is accomplished by retaining an awareness of the socioeconomic conditions and the broader political context in which lives are lived as one considers how culture and social structures shape the stories that life history interviewees tell (Lawler 2002). Site Selection and “Sample” As I sought to uncover the everyday experiences of Rwandans from all ethnic groups—Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa—before, during, and after the 1994 genocide, it was important that research participants live in and be surrounded by more or less a largely unchanging group of people. This was my primary motivation in basing the research in southern Rwanda, home to the largest pregenocide Tutsi population (Des Forges 1999, 432, 489, 593; Guichaoua 2005, 19–21). Many Rwandan communities have undergone profound changes as a result of the civil war of 1990–94, the genocide, massive population displacement during and after the genocide, government pressure to relocate to imidugudu (villages) since the genocide, and the January 2006 administrative reorganization of the country (HRW 2001b). Villages are not a traditional feature of the Rwandan landscape, as rural folks live in dispersed homesteads (see fig. 1); government efforts to relocate individuals to villages since the genocide have been met with much resistance, with Tutsi in the south the most vocal about their unwillingness to move (De Lame 2005a, 12–16; field notes 2006; van Leeuwen, 2001).1 Tutsi survivors of the genocide represent a small minority in many communities, and indeed many have relocated since the genocide. IBUKA (Kinyarwanda, “to remember”), the main survivor organization, estimates that 70 percent of survivors have relocated (interview with IBUKA representative 2006). Waldorf, citing a representative of AVEGA (Association of Genocide Widows), estimates 65 percent of survivors have relocated (Waldorf 2006, 76n457). Southern Rwanda, however, notably in and around Butare town, has not changed demographically and is much the same after the genocide as it was before (MINALOC 2002). All of the thirty-seven ordinary peasant Rwandans who participated in my research were resident in what is now South province before the genocide, and all but six of them had an experience of flight and return brought on by the 1994 genocide, whether they moved internally within Rwanda or went to the refugee camps in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known as Zaïre at the time. Of the 400 Rwandans I consulted in the
course of participant observation, 321 individuals had this experience of flight and return. Figure 1. Mud and thatch homes like these, most of which were rebuilt since the genocide, are now illegal under the government-led nyakatsi campaign to modernize Rwanda’s housing sector. (photo by Bert Ingelaere, © 2006)
Butare province (now part of South province) also had a tradition of resistance to the genocidal politics of the previous regime, and there are documented instances of Hutu and Tutsi working together to resist the genocide in its early days (Des Forges 1999, 216–20, 494–99; Guichaoua 2005, 250–58; 2010, 409– 53). There are also documented instances of Hutu who resisted the plan to kill Tutsi and who were threatened with death themselves by the Interahamwe militias that initiated much of the killing (Des Forges 1999, 555–91; Fujii 2009, 124; Straus 2006, 122–52). Also living in and around Butare town are Rwandans who lived through the humanitarian assistance offered by the French and those who fled to the relative safety of Burundi or were pushed into the camps along the border in Zaïre (Pottier 2002, 1–8; Umutesi 2004, 103–63). By the end of the genocide, in July 1994, an estimated one million Rwandans were internally displaced, and about 1.7 million had taken to the roads and fled to neighboring countries. There are also many survivors of the double massacre at the Kibeho internally displaced persons camp in what was then Gikongoro province: first the massacre of Tutsi and Hutu opposed to the genocide in April 1994 by the Interahamwe and then, in April 1995, a second attack when the military wing of the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), opened fire on a largely but not exclusively Hutu population (Prunier 2009, 38–42). The choice of southern Rwanda is also grounded in my own experiences in the region during an extended period of residence from July 1997 to January 2001, when I worked first as a human rights investigator with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mission for Rwanda (UNHRFOR) in Gitarama and Kibuye préfectures (now located in South and West province, respectively) and then as the resident coordinator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)/National University of Rwanda Anglophone Law Project, based in Butare town (now Huye).
Knowledge of place names from the period before the postgenocide government restructured Rwanda’s administration was critical during the research as the government changed the names of all provinces and collapsed smaller units into bigger units with new names (see figs. 2 and 3). Place names, notably those of towns and districts, were either changed or dropped altogether. The government justified the renaming as necessary for the healing of Tutsi survivors as the invocation of place name is “just too upsetting for them” (field notes 2006). Throughout the research period, however, ordinary Rwandans from all walks of life continued to use the old place names, while government officials, many of whom returned to Rwanda after the genocide, used the new names. Given the diversity of individual experiences before, during, and after the genocide and the demographic and administrative realities in southern Rwanda, I opted to follow individuals through their social and political networks, rather than limit the research to the goings-on in a specific community. Everyday life in Rwanda, like that in rural areas in other countries, is not confined to a geographical entity, despite government efforts to formalize village life through its imidugudu program (HRW 2001b; C. Newbury 2011). Consequently, I chose to follow the paths between individuals, and this approach took me across the country as the linkages between individuals were revealed. For example, the first participant in the research was born in South province, and her genocide experiences occurred in and around the place where she grew up, just to the south of Butare town. As she shared her story with me, and with her permission, I made notes about the individuals she referred to. She spoke of family, friends, and neighbors as well as of her interactions with government officials before and after the genocide. Some of the experiences with the people were positive, others negative. Regardless of the quality or nature of the relationship, I tried to follow up with each of the named individuals. In this way, I was able to trace the private and public relations of the individuals who agreed to participate in the research. This method provided 167 names. I contacted 95 individuals, of whom 37 agreed to participate. In addition to these individuals, I spoke with or observed approximately four hundred Rwandans in the course of their daily lives in spontaneous, casual conversations that resulted from everyday interactions near my base in Butare (now Huye) town and elsewhere, from Cyangugu (now Rusizi) in the west, north to Gitarama (now Muhanga), and northwest to Kibuye (now Karongi) and Gisenyi (now Rubavu), as well as at myriad points in between (see figs. 2 and 3).
Figure 2. Rwanda, pre-2006 administrative boundaries. (map by Jacob Noel and Carie Ernst, © 2013) Figure 3. Rwanda, post-2006 administrative boundaries with new place names. (map by Jacob Noel and Carie Ernst, © 2013) I have a basic knowledge of Kinyarwanda and was aware of the cultural norms and codes that would frame my presence in the lives of peasant Rwandans. I kept a book of Rwandan proverbs (Crépeau and Bizimana 1979) that served as a useful way to understand euphemistic comments about cows, drums, cooking pots, and warriors. I also kept Kinyarwanda language books with me at all times (Overdulve 1975; Shimamungu 1998), both as learning tools and to demonstrate that I was trying my best to speak to Rwandans in their mother tongue. I was able to speak about everyday things, such as shopping in the market and people’s family or work, and to order a drink at a local kiosk. This language facility also provided unparalleled day-to-day access to ordinary peasant Rwandans as I was able to repeatedly interview individuals in locations of their choosing—for example, in homesteads, banana groves, grazing pastures, kiosks, or pubs, on the bus or at the taxi stand, or simply during long walks through the hills—without a translator. Knowledge of the quiet resistance of peasant Rwandans also helped me to dig deeper when consensus versions of events inevitably arose, to go beneath the accepted standards of what could be safely discussed with an outsider. For example, a senior representative of one of my two local partner associations recommended many participants that I could interview, which I did but only because they were presented to me as “interviewable.” I later learned that the representative told these recommended participants what they could and could not say to me. For example, the cousin of the older sister (by a different father) of one of my participants was one of the individuals brought to my home by one of my local organizational contacts. She said that members of the organization in a community where some of my participants live had been told by my contact what they could and could not say during the interview. If the participant spoke on themes other than those “authorized” by the staff member, he or she would likely lose the privileges of membership, including access to health care and funds for school fees (corroborated by Chakravarty 2012, 257–59, 262–63). These narratives are not excerpted in the book but instead speak to broader processes of surveillance of foreign research projects and to local power dynamics within survivor organizations in particular and at the
community level more generally (cf. Begley 2013; Purdeková 2011; Thomson 2009a, 2013). My formal “sample” consisted of thirty-seven individuals, consisting of three ethnic Twa, twenty ethnic Hutu, and fourteen ethnic Tutsi, all of whom were “survivors” of the genocide. I averaged seven meetings with each individual, resulting in an average of 9.4 hours of recorded interview data per participant, for a total of 348 hours of recorded material. Of the Hutu individuals I interviewed, six had been through the gacaca process, while another six individuals—three who had confessed their crimes and three who had not— were in prison on charges of genocide. None of the thirty-seven participants identified as mixed Hutu-Tutsi. All declared a “single” identity of being Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa, which may be a reflection of kinship ties, as Rwandans take the ethnicity (or ubwoko) identity of their father. It may also be a function of socioeconomic class; all but two of my participants self- identified as poor or destitute. Ethnic identity did not shape their daily existence until the “law” of Directory: wp-content -> blogs.dir blogs.dir -> 3rd EurasiaTrajeco Conference blogs.dir -> Tsl 3378 – Pronunciation and tesl professor Paula Golombek blogs.dir -> Electrical engineering degree technical elective requirement blogs.dir -> The Security Organs of the Russian Federation a brief History 1991-2005 blogs.dir -> Aurelia aubert blogs.dir -> Task: Choose a play in which an important theme is effectively highlighted by one specific scene or incident blogs.dir -> Press release Huawei Releases LampSit 0 for Indoor mbb blogs.dir -> Dues Increase & State of the Union blogs.dir -> Civil Division General Information Booklet blogs.dir -> Away in the basement Download 3.15 Mb. Share with your friends:
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